The US 2020 Presidential Election & Attempts To Overturn It

[Red Team]

Watch me catch sh!t for this. He is a Millennial who thinks he knows more than he does at 25.

Based on voter age demographics, we don't claim him.

[TopHatter]

Watchdog probes if DOJ officials tried to overturn election

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Justice Department’s inspector general is launching an investigation to examine whether any former or current department officials “engaged in an improper attempt” to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.

Inspector General Michael Horowitz said Monday that the investigation will investigate allegations concerning the conduct of former and current Justice Department officials but will not extend to other government officials.

The Justice Department watchdog investigation follows a report in The New York Times that a former assistant attorney general, Jeffrey Clark, had been discussing a plan with then-President Donald Trump to oust the acting attorney general and try to challenge the results of the 2020 race by falsely saying there had been widespread election fraud.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer demanded the inspector general launch a probe “into this attempted sedition." The New York Democrat said it was “unconscionable a Trump Justice Department leader would conspire to subvert the people’s will.”

The watchdog's probe is part of a growing number of efforts underway to investigate the attempts by Trump and his allies to subvert the election results. The moves culminated in a deadly Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol and a second impeachment of Trump, this time for inciting an insurrection. Also on Monday, the voting machine company Dominion Systems filed a defamation suit against Trump's personal attorney Rudy Giuliani for his repeatedly false claims about widespread voting fraud in the election.

Election officials across the country, along with Trump's former attorney general, William Barr, have confirmed there was no widespread fraud in the election. Republican governors in Arizona and Georgia, key battleground states won by Democrat Joe Biden, also vouched for the integrity of the elections in their states. Nearly all the legal challenges from Trump and his allies have been dismissed by judges, including two tossed by the U.S. Supreme Court.
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[tbm3fan]

As Trump Raked In Cash Denying His Loss, Little Went to Actual Legal Fight


Former President Donald Trump and the Republican Party entered this year having stockpiled more than $175 million from fundraising in November and December based on his false claims of voter fraud, spending only a tiny fraction on lawyers and bills for his effort to overturn the presidential election, according to new campaign finance reports filed Sunday night.

The picture that emerges in the new Federal Election Commission reports is of Trump mounting a furious public relations effort to spread the lie and keep generating money from it, rather than making a sustained legal push to try to support his conspiracy theories.

His campaign’s single biggest expense in December was a nearly $5 million media buy paid to the firm that bought his television advertisements. His second-largest payment, $4.4 million, was for online advertising. And the Republican National Committee pocketed millions of dollars in donations — collecting 25 cents for every dollar Trump raised online — in the final weeks of the year as it spent relatively little on legal costs.

All told, Trump’s campaign spent only $10 million on legal costs — about one-fifth of what it spent on advertising and fundraising, according to an analysis of Federal Election Commission filings from Nov. 4 through the end of the year.

During that period, Trump’s conspiracy-fueled accusations that votes had been miscounted or misappropriated repeatedly fell flat in the courts. Joe Biden was elected president by voters on Nov. 3, confirmed by the Electoral College on Dec. 14 and ratified by Congress on Jan. 6 — the same day that Trump incited a mob that stormed the Capitol.

But while Trump’s efforts to delegitimize the election did not keep him in power, they did spur millions in contributions from loyal supporters and provided both him and the party with an enormous infusion of cash.

The Republican National Committee ended the year with more than $80 million in the bank after the fundraising blitz, and Trump had $31 million in the new political action committee he formed in November for his post-presidential political ventures.

That accounts for just some of their haul. The party and the former president had roughly $63 million more in two shared accounts waiting to be distributed between them, with Trump’s PAC entitled to 75% of the money raised in December, giving him an estimated $70 million PAC war chest.

Most of the money appears to have come online and from smaller contributors, with relatively few five- and six-figure checks, especially once the calendar turned to December. One $100,000 check in early December came from Elaine J. Wold, a major Republican donor in Florida.

Though his race was over, Trump’s voracious online fundraising from Nov. 24 through the end of the year even outpaced that of the two Republican senators, Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue, who were competing in the Georgia runoff elections that would determine control of the chamber.

During those 39 days, Trump and his shared committees with the RNC raised $80 million online; Loeffler and Perdue combined for closer to $75 million. Both lost.
Trump did incur some legal costs from more than a dozen law firms.

He paid $1.6 million to Kasowitz Benson Torres, more than $500,000 to Jones Day and about $600,000 to Dechert. The law firm of Kurt Hilbert, who was on Trump’s phone call pressuring the Republican secretary of state in Georgia, Brad Raffensperger, to “find” votes to overturn the election outcome, was paid more than $480,000. A $3 million payment went to the Wisconsin election commission to pay for a recount.

One major Republican donor, C. Boyden Gray, who contributed more than $2 million to Republicans in the 2020 cycle, also provided legal consulting for Trump, earning $114,000.
The man who made so many public appearances on behalf of Trump as his personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, reported no payments by the former president’s campaign. His firm was reimbursed for $63,423 in travel in mid-December.

An associate of Giuliani’s had asked that he be paid $20,000 a day for his work for Trump, which Giuliani initially denied. He later acknowledged the request to The New York Times, but he has continued to publicly deny making money for his work, including in a radio appearance Sunday.
“I haven’t made a penny on it,” Giuliani said.

The Trump campaign also spent $20,130 in mid-December for what were described as travel reimbursements to the Kerik Group, led by former New York Police Commissioner Bernard B. Kerik, whom Trump pardoned last year for his 2010 conviction on eight felonies. Kerik is a close ally of Giuliani’s.

The Trump operation continued to spend on fundraising, pouring millions more into a secretive limited liability company, American Made Media Consultants, for online and text-message advertising. Family members of Trump and Vice President Mike Pence once served on the board of that company, which had more than $700 million in spending flow through it during the 2020 campaign.

One of Trump’s shared committees with the Republican National Committee spent $237,000 on books through a company, Reagan Investments, that has also done work for a PAC controlled by Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas. The Trump campaign offered signed copies of Cruz’s book last fall to donors who gave $75 or more.

And, as they have since the beginning of his candidacy in 2015, Trump’s campaign accounts patronized his businesses in the postelection period.

The Trump Victory committee paid $34,000 to the Trump Hotel Collection in its final 2020 filing. The same committee also paid a Trump-owned limited liability company that operates a private plane, DT Endeavor, $39,200 on Nov. 24
.
Another Trump campaign committee paid $75,000 in rent to the Trump Tower building in December.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
© 2021 The New York Times Company
[/quote]

The man simply needs to be destroyed. Unfortunately doing it politically is out leaving only financially. One can only hope that or...

[TopHatter]

Trump pollster's campaign autopsy paints damning picture of defeat
The 27-page report pins Trump's loss on voter perception that he was untrustworthy and disapproval of his pandemic performance.

Former President Donald Trump has blamed the election results on unfounded claims of fraud and malfeasance. But at the top levels of his campaign, a detailed autopsy report that circulated among his political aides paints a far different — and more critical — portrait of what led to his defeat.

The post-mortem, a copy of which was obtained by POLITICO, says the former president suffered from voter perception that he wasn’t honest or trustworthy and that he was crushed by disapproval of his handling of the coronavirus pandemic. And while Trump spread baseless accusations of ballot-stuffing in heavily Black cities, the report notes that he was done in by hemorrhaging support from white voters.

The 27-page report, which was written by Trump chief pollster Tony Fabrizio, shows how Trump advisers were privately reckoning with his loss even as the former president and many of his supporters engaged in a conspiracy theory-fueled effort to overturn the election. The autopsy was completed in December 2020 and distributed to Trump’s top political advisers just before President Joe Biden’s Jan. 20 inauguration.

It is unclear if Trump has seen the report.

The findings are based on an analysis of exit polling in 10 states. Five of them — Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania — are states that Trump lost after winning them in 2016. The other five — Florida, Iowa, North Carolina, Ohio and Texas — are states that Trump won in both elections.

The report zeroes in on an array of demographics where Trump suffered decisive reversals in 2020, including among white seniors, the same group that helped to propel him to the White House. The autopsy says that Trump saw the “greatest erosion with white voters, particularly white men,” and that he “lost ground with almost every age group.” In the five states that flipped to Biden, Trump’s biggest drop-off was among voters aged 18-29 and 65 and older.

Suburbanites — who bolted from Trump after 2016 — also played a major role. The report says that the former president suffered a “double-digit erosion” with “White College educated voters across the board.”

The picture of the election presented in the report is widely shared by political professionals in both parties, if not by Trump and his legions of his supporters. Trump never offered a concession to Biden, and up until his final days in office, he clung to the debunked idea that the election had been stolen.

Fabrizio declined to comment on the post-mortem. A Trump spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment.

Trump’s personal behavior, the autopsy makes clear, contributed to his defeat. “Biden had a clear edge over POTUS on being seen as honest & trustworthy,” Fabrizio writes.

Trump’s response to the pandemic was also critical. The autopsy says that coronavirus registered as the top issue among voters, and that Biden won those voters by a nearly 3-to-1 margin. A majority registered disapproval of Trump’s handling of the virus.

Most voters said they prioritized battling the coronavirus over reopening the economy, even as the president put a firm emphasis on the latter. And roughly 75 percent of voters — most of whom favored Biden — said they favored public mask-wearing mandates.

The report also indirectly raises questions about the reelection campaign’s decision to pause advertising on TV over the summer and save resources until the fall. According to the findings, nearly 9-in-10 voters had made up their minds about whom to support by the final month of the race.

Fabrizio isn’t the only Trump adviser who has presented a post-mortem since Nov. 3. John McLaughlin, another Trump pollster, published a report on the conservative Newsmax website the week after the election.

Meanwhile, advisers to former Vice President Mike Pence brought in multiple pollsters to brief him on their conclusions after the election, according to a person familiar with the discussions. Among the takeaways was that Trump was gaining during the final weeks of the race and that his rallies had helped propel Republicans running in House and Senate races. But the pollsters also made clear that while there was substantial support for Trump’s policies, there was widespread exhaustion with the president.

Within Trump’s inner circle, Fabrizio had long espoused the belief that Trump needed to prioritize the pandemic in order to win reelection. Last summer, he penned a 79-page memo arguing that Trump needed to focus first on dealing with the pandemic rather than reopening the economy and recommending, among other things, that he should have been encouraging people to wear masks rather than mocking the practice.
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And in other news, scientists have confirmed that water is wet.

Number one thing I always hear from Trump's followers:

"I don't care about what Trump says, I care about what he does. I like his policies!

Turns out that what he says (non-stop lying) and what he does (ignoring COVID) are why he's not in the Oval Office anymore. How ironic...

Interesting demographics though. He managed to hold onto the nihilistic and cynical Generation X better than pretty much any other group. That certainly explains my asshole Trump-loving brother.

[TopHatter]

Inside the craziest meeting of the Trump presidency

Four conspiracy theorists marched into the Oval Office. It was early evening on Friday, Dec. 18 — more than a month after the election had been declared for Joe Biden, and four days after the Electoral College met in every state to make it official.

"How the hell did Sidney get in the building?" White House senior adviser Eric Herschmann grumbled from the outer Oval Office as Sidney Powell and her entourage strutted by to visit the president.

President Trump's private schedule hadn't included appointments for Powell or the others: former national security adviser Michael Flynn, former Overstock.com CEO Patrick Byrne, and a little-known former Trump administration official, Emily Newman. But they'd come to convince Trump that he had the power to take extreme measures to keep fighting.

As Powell and the others entered the Oval Office that evening, Herschmann — a wealthy business executive and former partner at Kasowitz Benson & Torres who'd been pulled out of quasi-retirement to advise Trump — quietly slipped in behind them.

The hours to come would pit the insurgent conspiracists against a handful of White House lawyers and advisers determined to keep the president from giving in to temptation to invoke emergency national security powers, seize voting machines and disable the primary levers of American democracy.

Herschmann took a seat in a yellow chair close to the doorway. Powell, Flynn, Newman and Byrne sat in a row before the Resolute Desk, facing the president.

For weeks now, ever since Rudy Giuliani had commandeered Trump’s floundering campaign to overturn the election, outsiders had been coming out of the woodwork to feed the president wild allegations of voter fraud based on highly dubious sources.

Trump was no longer focused on any semblance of a governing agenda, instead spending his days taking phone calls and meetings from anyone armed with conspiracy theories about the election. For the White House staff, it was an unending sea of garbage churned up by the bottom feeders.

Powell began this meeting with the same baseless claim that now has her facing a $1.3 billion defamation lawsuit: She told the president thatDominion Voting Systems had rigged their machines to flip votes from Trump to Biden and that it was part of an international communist plot to steal the election for the Democrats.

[Note: In response to a request for comment, Powell said in an emailed statement to Axios: “I will not publicly discuss my private meetings with the President of the United States. I believe those meetings are privileged and confidential under executive privilege and under rules of the legal profession. I would caution the readers to view mainstream media reports of any such conversations with a high degree of discernment and a healthy dose of skepticism.”]

Powell waved an affidavit from the pile of papers in her lap, claiming it contained testimony from someone involved in the development of rigged voting machines in Venezuela.

She proposed declaring a national security emergency, grantingher and her cabal top-secret security clearances and using the U.S. government to seize Dominion’s voting machines.

"Hold on a minute, Sidney," Herschmann interrupted from the back of the Oval. "You're part of the Rudy team, right? Is your theory that the Democrats got together and changed the rules, or is it that there was foreign interference in our election?"

Giuliani's legal efforts, while replete with debunked claims about voter fraud, had largely focused on allegations of misconduct by corrupt Democrats and election officials.

"It's foreign interference," Powell insisted, then added: "Rudy hasn't understood what this case is about until just now."

In disbelief, Herschmann yelled out to an aide in the outer Oval Office. "Get Pat down here immediately!" Several minutes later, White House counsel Pat Cipollone walked into the Oval. He looked at Byrne and said, "Who are you?"

The meeting was already getting heated.

White House staff had spent weeks poring over the evidence underlying hundreds of affidavits and other claims of fraud promoted by Trump allies like Powell. The team had done the due diligence and knew the specific details of what was being alleged better than anybody. Time and time again, they found, Powell's allegations fell apart under basic scrutiny.

But Powell, fixing on Trump, continued to elaborate on a fantastical election narrative involving Venezuela, Iran, China and others. She named a county in Georgia where she claimed she could prove that Dominion had illegally flipped the vote.

Herschmann interrupted to point out that Trump had actually won the Georgia county in question: "So your theory is that Dominion intentionally flipped the votes so we could win that county?"

As for Powell's larger claims, he demanded she provide evidence for what — if true — would amount to the greatest national security breach in American history. They needed to dial in one of the campaign's lawyers, Herschmann said, and Trump campaign lawyer Matt Morgan was patched in via speakerphone.

By now, people were yelling and cursing.

The room was starting to fill up. Trump's personal assistant summoned White House staff secretary Derek Lyons to join the meeting and asked him to bring a copy of a 2018 executive order that the Powell group kept citing as the key to victory. Lyons agreed with Cipollone and the other officials that Powell's theories were nonsensical.

It was now four against four.

Flynn went berserk. The former three-star general, whom Trump had fired as his first national security adviser after he was caught lying to the FBI (and later pardoned), stood up and turned from the Resolute Desk to face Herschmann.

"You're quitting! You're a quitter! You're not fighting!” he exploded at the senior adviser. Flynn then turned to the president, and implored: "Sir, we need fighters."

Herschmann ignored Flynn at first and continued to probe Powell's pitch with questions about the underlying evidence. "All you do is promise, but never deliver," he said to her sharply.

Flynn was ranting, seemingly infuriated about anyone challenging Powell, who had represented him in his recent legal battles.

Finally Herschmann had enough. "Why the fuck do you keep standing up and screaming at me?" he shot back at Flynn. "If you want to come over here, come over here. If not, sit your ass down." Flynn sat back down.

The meeting had come entirely off the rails.

Byrne, backing up Flynn, told Trump the White House lawyers didn't care about him and were being obstructive. "Sir, we're both entrepreneurs, and we both built businesses," the former Overstock CEO told Trump. "We know that there are times you have to be creative and take different steps."

This was a remarkable level of personal familiarity, given it was the first time Byrne had met the president. All the stanchions and buffers between the White House and the outside world had crumbled.

Byrne kept attacking the senior White House staff in front of Trump. "They've already abandoned you," he told the president aggressively. Periodically duringthe meeting Flynn or Byrne challenged Trump's top staff — portraying them as disloyal: So do you think the president won or not?

At one point, with Flynn shouting, Byrne raised his hand to talk. He stood up and turned around to face Herschmann. "You're a quitter," he said. "You've been interfering with everything. You've been cutting us off."

"Do you even know who the fuck I am, you idiot?" Herschmann snapped back.

"Yeah, you're Patrick Cipollone," Byrne said.

"Wrong! Wrong, you idiot!"

The staff were now on their feet, standing behind one of the couches and facing the Powell crew at the Resolute Desk. Cipollone stood to Herschmann's left. Lyons, on his last day onthe job, stood to Herschmann's right.

Trump was behind the desk, watching the show. He briefly left the meeting to wander into his private dining room.

The usually mild-mannered Lyons blasted the Powell set: "You've brought 60 cases. And you've lost every case you’ve had!"

Trump came back into the Oval Office from the dining room to rejoin the meeting. Lyons pointed out to Powell that their incompetence went beyond their lawsuits being thrown out for standing. "You somehow managed to misspell the word 'District' three different ways in your suits," he said pointedly.

In a Georgia case, the Powell team had misidentified the court on the first page of their filing as "THE UNITED STATES DISTRICCT COURT, NORTHERN DISTRCOICT OF GEORGIA." And they had identified the Michigan court as the "EASTERN DISTRCT OF MICHIGAN."

These were sloppy spelling errors. But given that these lawsuits aimed to overturn a presidential election, the court nomenclature should have been pristine.

Powell, Flynn and Byrne began attacking Lyons as they renewed their argument to Trump: There they go again, they want to focus on the insignificant details instead of fighting for you.

Trump replied, "No, no, he's right. That was very embarrassing. That shouldn't have happened."

The Powell team needed to regroup. They shifted to a new grievance to turn the conversation away from their embarrassing errors. Powell insisted that they hadn't "lost" the 60-odd court cases, since the cases were mostly dismissed for lack of standing and they had never had the chance to present their evidence.

Every judge is corrupt, she claimed. We can't rely on them. The White House lawyers couldn't believe what they were hearing. "That's your argument?" a stunned Herschmann said. "Even the judges we appointed? Are you out of your fucking mind?"

Powell had more to say. She and Flynn began trashing the FBI as well, and the Justice Department under Attorney General Bill Barr, telling Trump that neither could be trusted. Both institutions, they said, were corrupt, and Trump needed to fire the leadership and get in new people he could trust.

Cipollone, standing his ground amidst this mishmash of conspiracies, said they were totally wrong. He aggressively defended the DOJ and the FBI, saying they had looked into every major claim of fraud that had been reported.

Flynn and Powell had long nursed their antipathy to the FBI and Justice. Flynn had pleaded guilty in 2017 to lying to the FBI during the Russia investigation but withdrew the plea after hiring Powell as his lawyer in June 2019.

The two alleged the FBI had entrapped Flynn and failed to disclose exculpatory evidence, known as Brady material, as required by law. They had found an ally in Barr, a fierce critic of the Russia investigation who finally directed the DOJ to drop Flynn's case.

Herschmann, known inside the White House as a defender of Barr and the DOJ, went off on Flynn again: "Listen, the same people that you're trashing, if they didn't produce the Brady material to Sidney, your ass would still be in jail!"

It was no longer technically true that Flynn would be in jail, as he had received a post-election pardon from Trump. But Flynn was furious. "Don't mention my case," he roared. Herschmann responded, "Where do you think Sidney got this information? Where do you think it came from? From the exact same people in the Department of Justice that you're now saying are corrupt."

Byrne, wearing jeans, a hoodie and a neck gaiter, piped up with his own conspiracy: "I know how this works. I bribed Hillary Clinton $18 million on behalf of the FBI for a sting operation."

Herschmann stared at the eccentric millionaire. "What the hell are you talking about? Why would you say something like that?" Byrne brought up the bizarre Clinton bribery claim several more times during the meeting to the astonishment of White House lawyers.

Trump, for his part, also seemed perplexed by Byrne. But he was not entirely convinced the ideas Powell was presenting were insane.

He asked: You guys are offering me nothing. These guys are at least offering me a chance. They’re saying they have the evidence. Why not try this? The president seemed truly to believe the election was stolen, and his overriding sentiment was, let's give this a shot.

The words "martial law" were never spoken during the meeting, despite Flynn having raised the idea in an appearance the previous day on Newsmax, a right-wing hive for election conspiracies.

But this was a distinction without much of a difference. What Flynn and Powell were proposing amounted to suspending normal laws and mobilizing the U.S. government to seize Dominion voting machines around the country.

Powell was arguing that they couldn't get a judge to enforce any subpoena to hand over the voting machines because all the judges were corrupt. She and her group repeatedly referred to the National Emergencies Act and a Trump executive order from 2018 that was designed to clear the way for the government to sanction foreign actors interfering in U.S. elections.

These laws were, in the view of Powell, Flynn and the others, the key to unlocking extraordinary powers for Trump to stay in office beyond Jan. 20.

Their theory was that because foreign enemies had stolen the election, all bets were off and Trump could use the full force of the United States government to go after Dominion.

It was remarkable that the presidency had deteriorated to such an extent that this fight in the Oval Office between senior White House officials and radical conspiracists was even taking place.

"How exactly are you going to do this?" an exasperated Herschmann asked again, later in the conversation. Newman again cited the 2018 executive order, which prompted Herschmann to question out loud whether she was even a lawyer.

Then Byrne chimed in: "There are guys with big guns and badges who can get these things." Herschmann couldn't believe it. "What are you, three years old?" he asked.

Lyons, the staff secretary, told the president that the executive order Powell and Flynn were citing did not give him the authority they claimed it did to seize voting machines. Morgan, the campaign lawyer, also expressed skepticism about their idea of invoking national security emergency powers.

To help adjudicate, Trump then patched in the national security adviser, Robert O'Brien, on speakerphone. Trump's personal assistant brought O'Brien into the call with no explanation of what madness would await him.

O'Brien said very little in the short time he was on the call but intervened at one point to say he saw no evidence to support Powell's notion of declaring a national security emergency to seize voting machines. There was so much fiery crosstalk it was hard for anyone on the telephone to follow the conversation.

Trump expressed skepticism at various points about Powell's theories, but he said, "At least she’s out there fighting."

The discussion shifted from Dominion voting machines to a conversation about appointing Powell as a special counsel inside the government to investigate voter fraud. She wanted a top secret security clearance and access to confidential voter information.

Lyons told Trump he couldn't appoint Powell as a special counsel at the Justice Department because this was an attorney general appointment. Lyons, Cipollone and Herschmann — in fact the entire senior White House staff who were aware of this idea — were all vehemently opposed to Powell becoming a special counsel anywhere in the government.

By this point Trump had also patched into the call his personal lawyer Giuliani and White House chief of staff Mark Meadows. Meadows indicated that he was trying to wrap his mind around what exactly Powell's role would entail. He told Powell she would have to fill out the SF-86 questionnaire before starting as special counsel.

This was seen as a delaying tactic. The sense in the room was that Trump might actually greenlight this extraordinary proposal.

At its essence, the Powell crew's argument to the president was this: We have the real information. These people — your White House staff — don't believe in the truth. They're liars and quitters. They're not willing to fight for you because they don't want to get their hands dirty. Put us in charge. Let us take control of everything. We'll prove to you that what we're saying is right. We won't quit, we'll fight. We're willing to fight for the presidency.

On some level, this argument was music to Trump's ears. He was desperate. Powell and her team were the only people willing to tell him what he wanted to hear — that a path to stay in power in the White House remained.

The Oval Office portion of the meeting had dragged on for nearly three hours, creeping beyond 9 p.m. The arguments became so heated that even Giuliani — still on the phone — at one point told everyone to calm down. One participant later recalled: "When Rudy's the voice of reason, you know the meeting's not going well."

Giuliani told Trump he was going to come over to the White House. The president, having forgotten about the others on the line, hung up and cut multiple people off the call.

Herschmann, Cipollone and Lyons left the Oval Office, but soon discovered that the Powell entourage had made their way to the president’s residence. They followed them upstairs, to the Yellow Oval Room, Trump's living room, where they were joined by Giuliani and Meadows.

Trump sat beside Powell in armchairs facing the door, separated by a round, wooden antique table. Giuliani sat in an armchair to the right of them, while Byrne and Meadows sat on a couch. Byrne wolfed down pigs in a blanket and little meatballs on toothpicks that staff had set on the coffee table.

Herschmann was primed to brawl and ready to dump on Powell. It had been a long day.

"Rudy," he said, turning to Giuliani, "Sidney was just in the Oval telling the president you don't know what the fuck you're doing. Right, Sidney?" He turned to Powell: "Why don't you tell Rudy to his face?"

"Eric, really it's not appropriate," Trump replied curtly.

"What's not appropriate?" Herschmann shot back. Turning to Powell, he said, "Why don't you repeat to Rudy what you just told the president in the Oval Office — that he has no idea about the case and that he only just began to understand it a few hours ago."

Three days later, Giuliani would publicly distance himself from Powell, telling Newsmax that Powell did not represent the president, and that "whatever she's talking about, it's her own opinions."

It didn't take long for the yelling to start up again. They were now in hour four of a meeting unprecedented even by the deranged standards of the final days of the Trump presidency.

Now it was Meadows' turn, blasting Flynn for trashing him and accusing him of being a quitter. "Don't you dare challenge me about whether I'm being supportive of the president and working hard," Meadows shouted, reminding Flynn that he'd defended him during his legal troubles.

Trump and Cipollone, who frequently butted heads, went at it too, over whether the administration had the authority to do what Powell was proposing.

Powell kept asserting throughout the night that she had — or would soon produce — the evidence needed to prove foreign interference. She kept insisting that Trump had the legal authority he needed to seize voting machines. But she did not have the goods.

Powell at one point turned to Lyons and demanded, "Why are you speaking? Are you still employed here?" The staff secretary, who had already resigned, laughed and joked, "Well I guess I'm here until midnight."

It was after midnight by the time the White House officials had finally said their piece. They left that night fully prepared for the mad possibility Trump might still name Sidney Powell special counsel. You have our advice, they told the president before walking out. You decide who to listen to.
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Couldn't decide if this belongs in the "TDS" thread, the "Cult of Donald Trump" thread or this one. In any event, it's long read, but one that needs to be posted in full, because this was the Trump "Administration" in a microcosm

[TopHatter]

Election fraud liars are scrambling to avoid lawsuits, but they can't retract the damage they've done

The mass delusion that rampant election fraud cost Donald Trump the 2020 election isn't an overnight phenomenon.

It required the steady hum of repetition for it to become ingrained in the minds of Trump supporters.

Whether it was from a meme on Facebook or a conservative news network or right-wing conspiracy blog - the deluge of lies stuck in the brains of millions.

Some of those consumed by these lies then stormed the Capitol, many more say they no longer believe in American democracy.

But now the voting technology companies who have been slandered, libeled, and had their business' reputations effectively destroyed as a result of these election fraud lies are fighting back with billion-dollar lawsuits and hints of more to come.

As a result, the retractions from the Trump media ecosphere are coming fast and furious.

Just yesterday, Newsmax cut off MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell when he started ranting about Dominion voting machines. One of the hosts then read a prepared statement asserting that Newsmax has seen no evidence of voting machine fraud and that the election was fair, legal, and is over.

But no matter how much they'd like to convince opposition lawyers that they've corrected the record, the Trumpist liars can never retract the damage they've done.

Lies and retractions
Much like Trump spread nonsense throughout his presidency with caveats like "I've been hearing" and "people are saying," the 45th president's lawyers and media allies propagated lies disingenuously presented as "just asking questions."

Of the many conspiracy theories floated as evidence that Trump's election defeat was fraudulent - even in voting districts where down ballot Republicans exceeded expectations and won - is a lie about nefarious voting machines undercounting Trump votes (but only Trump votes). In particular two voting tech companies - Smartmatic and Dominion Voting Systems - were made the boogeymen of this grand fake conspiracy.

By various turns, these anti-Trump machines were part of a plot originating with China or George Soros or the late Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez - it doesn't matter which to the hardcore Trumpist. They just know something amiss, because their social media and cable TV echo chambers reinforce the delusion.

And while the mere threat of a lawsuit by Smartmatic got Fox News to air a video package debunking misinformation spread by its network's own hosts, the lies haven't been surgically removed from millions of people's brains. The seeds were planted, and the lie outlives the liar's message.

The Trumpist network Newsmax also responded to the legal threat by issuing a "clarification" of its earlier conspiracy theory-peddling, admitting that: "No evidence has been offered that Dominion or Smartmatic used software or reprogrammed software that manipulated votes in the 2020 election."

Dominion Voting Systems has come out swinging, too.

As a result, the Trump-sycophantic OAN quietly deleted its articles alleging fraud by Dominion.

And the conservative website American Thinker - popular on Facebook as a kind of "intellectual" depository for Trumpist conspiracy theories - wrote several stories about Dominion.

But then the lawyers convinced the site to retract. And boy, did they retract.

In a January 15 statement, American Thinker admitted its stories relied on "discredited sources who have peddled debunked theories about Dominion's supposed ties to Venezuela, fraud on Dominion's machines that resulted in massive vote switching or weighted votes."

"These statements are completely false and have no basis in fact ...It was wrong for us to publish these false statements," the statement added.

But Dominion's moonshot is directed at Trump lawyers Sidney Powell and Rudy Giuliani, who both have been served with suits seeking $1.3 billion in damages for the myriad lies they told about election fraud that never took place and for which they never provided evidence.

And according to First Amendment lawyer Floyd Abrams, both Dominion and Smartmatic have presented good cases to back up their defamation claims. Abrams told The New York Times, "The repeated accusations against both companies are plainly defamatory and surely have done enormous reputational and financial harm to both."

Dominion's CEO John Poulos said: "Because Giuliani and others incessantly repeated the false claims about my company on a range of media platforms, some of our own family and friends are among the Americans who were duped."

That last part hits hard.

We all have "family and friends" who still believe that came across their Facebook feeds, even after the retractions.

And fewer than one-third of Republican voters believe the 2020 election was "free and fair," according to a recent Morning Consult poll.

The retractions will never be able to undo the damage the liars have done.
___________

Conspiracy theorists are always "just asking questions"....aka JAQing off.

[Albany Rifles]

Did you see the video of the NewsMax anchor when Lindell wouldn't shut up?

He took off his mike live on air and walked off the set so he wouldn't be affiliated with this crap.

And as for "people are saying," & "I've been hearing" I heard Press Secretary Jen Psaki shut down a reporter the other day for trying that game. SO great to see that happening again.

[TopHatter]

Did you see the video of the NewsMax anchor when Lindell wouldn't shut up?

He took off his mike live on air and walked off the set so he wouldn't be affiliated with this crap.

And as for "people are saying," & "I've been hearing" I heard Press Secretary Jen Psaki shut down a reporter the other day for trying that game. SO great to see that happening again.

LOL yeah and Lindell whining about how they're no different than Twitter or something

Newsmax either has limits (even for them)...or they're terrified of the 900 lb gorilla lawsuits that about to drop on their heads

[Albany Rifles]

Joe, my vote is on the gorilla!

[TopHatter]

Joe, my vote is on the gorilla!

Mine too!

[Red Team]

LOL yeah and Lindell whining about how they're no different than Twitter or something

Newsmax either has limits (even for them)...or they're terrified of the 900 lb gorilla lawsuits that about to drop on their heads

Harambe never truly died, he was reincarnated as defamation litigation.

[TopHatter]

Judge rips Arizona GOP for 'groundless' lawsuit challenging Biden's win, orders it to pay legal fees


Calling its lawsuit challenging 2020 election procedures "groundless" and "disingenuous," a judge has ordered the Arizona Republican Party – and its lawyers – to pay the state thousands of dollars in legal fees.

In his ruling, Maricopa County Superior Court Judge John Hannah contended the GOP's team acted in "bad faith" when it questioned the process for auditing voting machines and sought to delay certification of election results last November.

Instead of living up to the "privileged position in the electoral process" afforded to it by state law, Hannah said, the party sought to undermine Arizonans' confidence in election results.

"The public has a right to expect the Arizona Republican Party to conduct itself respectfully," he wrote. "It has failed to do so in this case."

The party and its attorneys must pay the Arizona Secretary of State's Office $18,238, according to the order. That's just a fraction of nearly $152,000 the agency said it spent defending itself against a barrage of election fraud lawsuits challenging President Joe Biden's Arizona win.

Secretary of State Katie Hobbs said the "damage inflicted upon our democracy by frivolous lawsuits and conspiracy theories can't be measured in dollars." But she called the order "good news for taxpayers" and said it sent an important message to "those willing to abuse the legal process for political purposes."

Arizona GOP attorney Jack Wilenchik, on the other hand, said directives like Hannah's serve only to "stop plaintiffs from rightfully invoking the courts to hear their issues." He said the order "encourages public distrust in the government for being openly hostile to them."

"We will be appealing this ruling, and it will be reversed," Wilenchik said.

Party challenged county audit process
The GOP's lawsuit against Maricopa County centered on how election officials audited the accuracy of electronic vote tallies. Instead of sampling assigned precincts to conduct their hand count, officials sampled vote centers that were open to any voter in the county – a strategy the GOP contended was both unlawful and imprecise.

"The idea, as best the Court could figure it out, was that that precinct-by-precinct hand counts would reveal precincts where the number of votes exceeded the number of registered voters," Hannah wrote.

"These were flimsy excuses for a lawsuit. The hand count is not meant to create data points for political parties to 'cross-check with other voter registration data.' The purpose of the hand count audit is to compare the results of the machine count to the hand count to assure that the machines are working properly and accurately counting votes.”

Maricopa County's hand count, which had bipartisan oversight, matched electronic counts exactly. But the Republican Party insisted state law explicitly required the county to use the precinct-based method, rather than the center-based method outlined in the secretary of state's Election Procedures Manual – despite the law deferring to that manual to outline voting center rules.

Hannah also noted the party did not name Hobbs as a defendant in the lawsuit, even though county officials were implementing her office's rules. She later intervened in the case herself to address claims involving her office.

Nor did the GOP name any of the less populous counties that also used and audited voting centers in the 2020 election.

"That the plaintiff did not proceed that way suggest(s) that its concern was something other than 'strict compliance' and 'election integrity,'" Hannah wrote.

Judge: Case was politically motivated
Hannah also questioned the GOP's motives for requesting an injunction as the lawsuit progressed.

Wilenchik had asked to delay the county's certification of election results until a new hand count could be done, saying there would be "zero real hardship" to election officials if the canvass was pushed back.

"If an injunction is not granted, then there will be lingering questions about the legitimacy of these results which could otherwise be answered through a proper hand count,” Wilenchik wrote at the time. “It will create a cloud over the legitimacy of this election and its results.”

Hannah said it was the GOP's lawsuit, not the hand count procedure, that "cast false shadows on the election’s legitimacy." He noted that Wilenchik, in responding to the secretary of state's request for legal fees, had acknowledged public doubts about election results had played a role in the lawsuit.

"'Public mistrust' is a political issue, not a legal or factual basis for litigation," Hannah wrote.

In a statement provided to The Arizona Republic on Monday, Wilenchik disagreed, arguing that a lawsuit to "enforce the plain wording of the law is never 'groundless.'"

"For a county judge to say that widespread public mistrust in an election is an 'improper' reason for a political party to be in his court is sorely disrespectful to the views of the many Americans whom I am proud to represent," he said.

The order sanctions Lee Miller, a lawyer who testified in favor of the injunction, in addition to the Arizona Republican Party and Wilenchik's firm. Miller and Wilenchik also are named in a separate complaint related to election lawsuits pending in front of the state bar association.
_____________

FINALLY. Let this be the first of many.

[statquo]

Episode 9: Trump's war with his generals

Axios' "Off the rails" series documents the end of the Trump administration, from election night 2020 through the Jan. 6 siege of the U.S. Capitol.

One important piece is only now beginning to emerge: Former President Donald Trump's last-minute bid to pull U.S. forces from Afghanistan and swaths of the Middle East, Africa and even Europe ahead of Joe Biden's inauguration — and why he blinked.

John McEntee, one of Donald Trump's most-favored aides, handed retired Army Col. Douglas Macgregor a piece of paper with a few notes scribbled on it. He explained: "This is what the president wants you to do."

1. Get us out of Afghanistan.

2. Get us out of Iraq and Syria.

3. Complete the withdrawal from Germany.

4. Get us out of Africa.

It was Nov. 9, 2020 — days after Trump lost his re-election bid, 10 weeks before the end of his presidency and just moments after Macgregor was offered a post as senior adviser to acting Defense Secretary Christopher Miller.

As head of the powerful Presidential Personnel Office, McEntee had Trump's ear. Even so, Macgregor was astonished. He told McEntee he doubted they could do all of these things before Jan. 20.

"Then do as much as you can," McEntee replied.

In Macgregor's opinion, Miller probably couldn't act on his own authority to execute a total withdrawal of U.S. military forces from Afghanistan because he was serving in an acting capacity. If this was for real, Macgregor told McEntee, then it was going to need an order from the president.

The one-page memo was delivered by courier to Christopher Miller's office two days later, on the afternoon of Nov. 11. The order arrived seemingly out of nowhere, and its instructions, signed by Trump, were stunning: All U.S. military forces were to be withdrawn from Somalia by Dec. 31, 2020. All U.S. forces were to be withdrawn from Afghanistan by Jan. 15, 2021.

What the fuck is this? Miller wondered.

A former Green Beret, Miller had directed the National Counterterrorism Center and was accustomed to following process. Trump had tapped him to run the Pentagon after his unceremonious firing-by-tweet of Mark Esper. It was Miller's third day on the job.

News of the memo spread quickly throughout the Pentagon. Top military brass, including Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Mark Milley, were appalled. This was not the way to conduct policy — with no consultation, no input, no process for gaming out consequences or offering alternatives.

A call was quickly placed to White House Counsel Pat Cipollone. In turn, Cipollone notified the national security adviser, Robert O'Brien. Neither Cipollone nor O'Brien had any idea what the order was or where it had come from.

Neither did the office of the staff secretary — whose job it was to vet all the paper that reached the president's desk. Yet the paper bore Trump's distinctive Sharpie signature.

The U.S. government's top national security leaders soon realized they were dealing with an off-the-books operation by the commander in chief himself.

Many would rally to push back — sometimes openly and in coordination, at other times so discreetly that top Trump administration officials had to turn to classified intercepts from the National Security Agency for clues.

Trump's instincts should have come as little surprise. He was frantically trying to salvage his own legacy while simultaneously trying to overturn the election results and block Biden's transition to power. The result was chaos.

A lot more in the link for anyone interested. This was a wild, crazy article. I'll post a few pieces that I found interesting.

Some senior officials also deliberately deceived Trump. "What Syria withdrawal? There was never a Syria withdrawal," Jim Jeffrey, Trump's special envoy to Syria and the anti-ISIS coalition, told Defense One in a post-election interview in November 2020.

"We were always playing shell games to not make clear to our leadership how many troops we had there," he said, adding that the real number of troops in northeast Syria is "a lot more than" the roughly 200 Trump initially agreed to leave there in 2019.

It was a stunning admission. But it was one that reflected the mindset of some of the national security leaders and savvy bureaucrats who had repeatedly thwarted the commander in chief's demands over four years.

This was interesting. They just flat out lied to Trump over troops numbers.

Trump, with McEntee's encouragement, fired Esper on Nov. 9. White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows called Esper to give him a heads up just minutes before a presidential tweet named Christopher Miller as the successor.

The relatively low-profile Miller had first met Trump as an NSC counterterrorism adviser on Oct. 26, 2019 — the night of the special operations raid that killed ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. A request by the commander in chief to lead the Pentagon was not something that Miller, a U.S. Army veteran, felt he could turn down, despite pleas from his family and friends.

Miller told associates he had three goals for the final weeks of the Trump administration: #1: No major war. #2: No military coup. #3: No troops fighting citizens on the streets.

Who would ever have thought those last 2 would be something someone in senior leadership would have to be seriously and actively on the watch for?

[statquo]

Bonus episode: Inside the craziest meeting of the Trump presidency

Four conspiracy theorists marched into the Oval Office. It was early evening on Friday, Dec. 18 — more than a month after the election had been declared for Joe Biden, and four days after the Electoral College met in every state to make it official.

"How the hell did Sidney get in the building?" White House senior adviser Eric Herschmann grumbled from the outer Oval Office as Sidney Powell and her entourage strutted by to visit the president.

President Trump's private schedule hadn't included appointments for Powell or the others: former national security adviser Michael Flynn, former Overstock.com CEO Patrick Byrne, and a little-known former Trump administration official, Emily Newman. But they'd come to convince Trump that he had the power to take extreme measures to keep fighting.

As Powell and the others entered the Oval Office that evening, Herschmann — a wealthy business executive and former partner at Kasowitz Benson & Torres who'd been pulled out of quasi-retirement to advise Trump — quietly slipped in behind them.

The hours to come would pit the insurgent conspiracists against a handful of White House lawyers and advisers determined to keep the president from giving in to temptation to invoke emergency national security powers, seize voting machines and disable the primary levers of American democracy.

Herschmann took a seat in a yellow chair close to the doorway. Powell, Flynn, Newman and Byrne sat in a row before the Resolute Desk, facing the president.

For weeks now, ever since Rudy Giuliani had commandeered Trump’s floundering campaign to overturn the election, outsiders had been coming out of the woodwork to feed the president wild allegations of voter fraud based on highly dubious sources.

Trump was no longer focused on any semblance of a governing agenda, instead spending his days taking phone calls and meetings from anyone armed with conspiracy theories about the election. For the White House staff, it was an unending sea of garbage churned up by the bottom feeders.

Powell began this meeting with the same baseless claim that now has her facing a $1.3 billion defamation lawsuit: She told the president thatDominion Voting Systems had rigged their machines to flip votes from Trump to Biden and that it was part of an international communist plot to steal the election for the Democrats.

[Note: In response to a request for comment, Powell said in an emailed statement to Axios: “I will not publicly discuss my private meetings with the President of the United States. I believe those meetings are privileged and confidential under executive privilege and under rules of the legal profession. I would caution the readers to view mainstream media reports of any such conversations with a high degree of discernment and a healthy dose of skepticism.”]

Powell waved an affidavit from the pile of papers in her lap, claiming it contained testimony from someone involved in the development of rigged voting machines in Venezuela.

She proposed declaring a national security emergency, grantingher and her cabal top-secret security clearances and using the U.S. government to seize Dominion’s voting machines.

"Hold on a minute, Sidney," Herschmann interrupted from the back of the Oval. "You're part of the Rudy team, right? Is your theory that the Democrats got together and changed the rules, or is it that there was foreign interference in our election?"

Giuliani's legal efforts, while replete with debunked claims about voter fraud, had largely focused on allegations of misconduct by corrupt Democrats and election officials.

"It's foreign interference," Powell insisted, then added: "Rudy hasn't understood what this case is about until just now."

In disbelief, Herschmann yelled out to an aide in the outer Oval Office. "Get Pat down here immediately!" Several minutes later, White House counsel Pat Cipollone walked into the Oval. He looked at Byrne and said, "Who are you?"

The meeting was already getting heated.

White House staff had spent weeks poring over the evidence underlying hundreds of affidavits and other claims of fraud promoted by Trump allies like Powell. The team had done the due diligence and knew the specific details of what was being alleged better than anybody. Time and time again, they found, Powell's allegations fell apart under basic scrutiny.

But Powell, fixing on Trump, continued to elaborate on a fantastical election narrative involving Venezuela, Iran, China and others. She named a county in Georgia where she claimed she could prove that Dominion had illegally flipped the vote.

Herschmann interrupted to point out that Trump had actually won the Georgia county in question: "So your theory is that Dominion intentionally flipped the votes so we could win that county?"

As for Powell's larger claims, he demanded she provide evidence for what — if true — would amount to the greatest national security breach in American history. They needed to dial in one of the campaign's lawyers, Herschmann said, and Trump campaign lawyer Matt Morgan was patched in via speakerphone.

By now, people were yelling and cursing.

The room was starting to fill up. Trump's personal assistant summoned White House staff secretary Derek Lyons to join the meeting and asked him to bring a copy of a 2018 executive order that the Powell group kept citing as the key to victory. Lyons agreed with Cipollone and the other officials that Powell's theories were nonsensical.

It was now four against four.

Flynn went berserk. The former three-star general, whom Trump had fired as his first national security adviser after he was caught lying to the FBI (and later pardoned), stood up and turned from the Resolute Desk to face Herschmann.

"You're quitting! You're a quitter! You're not fighting!” he exploded at the senior adviser. Flynn then turned to the president, and implored: "Sir, we need fighters."

Herschmann ignored Flynn at first and continued to probe Powell's pitch with questions about the underlying evidence. "All you do is promise, but never deliver," he said to her sharply.

Flynn was ranting, seemingly infuriated about anyone challenging Powell, who had represented him in his recent legal battles.

Finally Herschmann had enough. "Why the fuck do you keep standing up and screaming at me?" he shot back at Flynn. "If you want to come over here, come over here. If not, sit your ass down." Flynn sat back down.

The meeting had come entirely off the rails.

Byrne, backing up Flynn, told Trump the White House lawyers didn't care about him and were being obstructive. "Sir, we're both entrepreneurs, and we both built businesses," the former Overstock CEO told Trump. "We know that there are times you have to be creative and take different steps."

This was a remarkable level of personal familiarity, given it was the first time Byrne had met the president. All the stanchions and buffers between the White House and the outside world had crumbled.

Byrne kept attacking the senior White House staff in front of Trump. "They've already abandoned you," he told the president aggressively. Periodically duringthe meeting Flynn or Byrne challenged Trump's top staff — portraying them as disloyal: So do you think the president won or not?

At one point, with Flynn shouting, Byrne raised his hand to talk. He stood up and turned around to face Herschmann. "You're a quitter," he said. "You've been interfering with everything. You've been cutting us off."

"Do you even know who the fuck I am, you idiot?" Herschmann snapped back.

"Yeah, you're Patrick Cipollone," Byrne said.

"Wrong! Wrong, you idiot!"

The staff were now on their feet, standing behind one of the couches and facing the Powell crew at the Resolute Desk. Cipollone stood to Herschmann's left. Lyons, on his last day onthe job, stood to Herschmann's right.

Trump was behind the desk, watching the show. He briefly left the meeting to wander into his private dining room.

The usually mild-mannered Lyons blasted the Powell set: "You've brought 60 cases. And you've lost every case you’ve had!"

Trump came back into the Oval Office from the dining room to rejoin the meeting. Lyons pointed out to Powell that their incompetence went beyond their lawsuits being thrown out for standing. "You somehow managed to misspell the word 'District' three different ways in your suits," he said pointedly.

In a Georgia case, the Powell team had misidentified the court on the first page of their filing as "THE UNITED STATES DISTRICCT COURT, NORTHERN DISTRCOICT OF GEORGIA." And they had identified the Michigan court as the "EASTERN DISTRCT OF MICHIGAN."

These were sloppy spelling errors. But given that these lawsuits aimed to overturn a presidential election, the court nomenclature should have been pristine.

Powell, Flynn and Byrne began attacking Lyons as they renewed their argument to Trump: There they go again, they want to focus on the insignificant details instead of fighting for you.

Trump replied, "No, no, he's right. That was very embarrassing. That shouldn't have happened."

The Powell team needed to regroup. They shifted to a new grievance to turn the conversation away from their embarrassing errors. Powell insisted that they hadn't "lost" the 60-odd court cases, since the cases were mostly dismissed for lack of standing and they had never had the chance to present their evidence.

Every judge is corrupt, she claimed. We can't rely on them. The White House lawyers couldn't believe what they were hearing. "That's your argument?" a stunned Herschmann said. "Even the judges we appointed? Are you out of your fucking mind?"

Powell had more to say. She and Flynn began trashing the FBI as well, and the Justice Department under Attorney General Bill Barr, telling Trump that neither could be trusted. Both institutions, they said, were corrupt, and Trump needed to fire the leadership and get in new people he could trust.

Cipollone, standing his ground amidst this mishmash of conspiracies, said they were totally wrong. He aggressively defended the DOJ and the FBI, saying they had looked into every major claim of fraud that had been reported.

Flynn and Powell had long nursed their antipathy to the FBI and Justice. Flynn had pleaded guilty in 2017 to lying to the FBI during the Russia investigation but withdrew the plea after hiring Powell as his lawyer in June 2019.

The two alleged the FBI had entrapped Flynn and failed to disclose exculpatory evidence, known as Brady material, as required by law. They had found an ally in Barr, a fierce critic of the Russia investigation who finally directed the DOJ to drop Flynn's case.

Herschmann, known inside the White House as a defender of Barr and the DOJ, went off on Flynn again: "Listen, the same people that you're trashing, if they didn't produce the Brady material to Sidney, your ass would still be in jail!"

It was no longer technically true that Flynn would be in jail, as he had received a post-election pardon from Trump. But Flynn was furious. "Don't mention my case," he roared. Herschmann responded, "Where do you think Sidney got this information? Where do you think it came from? From the exact same people in the Department of Justice that you're now saying are corrupt."

Byrne, wearing jeans, a hoodie and a neck gaiter, piped up with his own conspiracy: "I know how this works. I bribed Hillary Clinton $18 million on behalf of the FBI for a sting operation."

Herschmann stared at the eccentric millionaire. "What the hell are you talking about? Why would you say something like that?" Byrne brought up the bizarre Clinton bribery claim several more times during the meeting to the astonishment of White House lawyers.

Trump, for his part, also seemed perplexed by Byrne. But he was not entirely convinced the ideas Powell was presenting were insane.

He asked: You guys are offering me nothing. These guys are at least offering me a chance. They’re saying they have the evidence. Why not try this? The president seemed truly to believe the election was stolen, and his overriding sentiment was, let's give this a shot.

The words "martial law" were never spoken during the meeting, despite Flynn having raised the idea in an appearance the previous day on Newsmax, a right-wing hive for election conspiracies.

But this was a distinction without much of a difference. What Flynn and Powell were proposing amounted to suspending normal laws and mobilizing the U.S. government to seize Dominion voting machines around the country.

Powell was arguing that they couldn't get a judge to enforce any subpoena to hand over the voting machines because all the judges were corrupt. She and her group repeatedly referred to the National Emergencies Act and a Trump executive order from 2018 that was designed to clear the way for the government to sanction foreign actors interfering in U.S. elections.

These laws were, in the view of Powell, Flynn and the others, the key to unlocking extraordinary powers for Trump to stay in office beyond Jan. 20.

Their theory was that because foreign enemies had stolen the election, all bets were off and Trump could use the full force of the United States government to go after Dominion.

It was remarkable that the presidency had deteriorated to such an extent that this fight in the Oval Office between senior White House officials and radical conspiracists was even taking place.

"How exactly are you going to do this?" an exasperated Herschmann asked again, later in the conversation. Newman again cited the 2018 executive order, which prompted Herschmann to question out loud whether she was even a lawyer.

Then Byrne chimed in: "There are guys with big guns and badges who can get these things." Herschmann couldn't believe it. "What are you, three years old?" he asked.

Lyons, the staff secretary, told the president that the executive order Powell and Flynn were citing did not give him the authority they claimed it did to seize voting machines. Morgan, the campaign lawyer, also expressed skepticism about their idea of invoking national security emergency powers.

To help adjudicate, Trump then patched in the national security adviser, Robert O'Brien, on speakerphone. Trump's personal assistant brought O'Brien into the call with no explanation of what madness would await him.

O'Brien said very little in the short time he was on the call but intervened at one point to say he saw no evidence to support Powell's notion of declaring a national security emergency to seize voting machines. There was so much fiery crosstalk it was hard for anyone on the telephone to follow the conversation.

Trump expressed skepticism at various points about Powell's theories, but he said, "At least she’s out there fighting."

The discussion shifted from Dominion voting machines to a conversation about appointing Powell as a special counsel inside the government to investigate voter fraud. She wanted a top secret security clearance and access to confidential voter information.

Lyons told Trump he couldn't appoint Powell as a special counsel at the Justice Department because this was an attorney general appointment. Lyons, Cipollone and Herschmann — in fact the entire senior White House staff who were aware of this idea — were all vehemently opposed to Powell becoming a special counsel anywhere in the government.

By this point Trump had also patched into the call his personal lawyer Giuliani and White House chief of staff Mark Meadows. Meadows indicated that he was trying to wrap his mind around what exactly Powell's role would entail. He told Powell she would have to fill out the SF-86 questionnaire before starting as special counsel.

This was seen as a delaying tactic. The sense in the room was that Trump might actually greenlight this extraordinary proposal.

At its essence, the Powell crew's argument to the president was this: We have the real information. These people — your White House staff — don't believe in the truth. They're liars and quitters. They're not willing to fight for you because they don't want to get their hands dirty. Put us in charge. Let us take control of everything. We'll prove to you that what we're saying is right. We won't quit, we'll fight. We're willing to fight for the presidency.

On some level, this argument was music to Trump's ears. He was desperate. Powell and her team were the only people willing to tell him what he wanted to hear — that a path to stay in power in the White House remained.

The Oval Office portion of the meeting had dragged on for nearly three hours, creeping beyond 9 p.m. The arguments became so heated that even Giuliani — still on the phone — at one point told everyone to calm down. One participant later recalled: "When Rudy's the voice of reason, you know the meeting's not going well."

Giuliani told Trump he was going to come over to the White House. The president, having forgotten about the others on the line, hung up and cut multiple people off the call.

Herschmann, Cipollone and Lyons left the Oval Office, but soon discovered that the Powell entourage had made their way to the president’s residence. They followed them upstairs, to the Yellow Oval Room, Trump's living room, where they were joined by Giuliani and Meadows.

Trump sat beside Powell in armchairs facing the door, separated by a round, wooden antique table. Giuliani sat in an armchair to the right of them, while Byrne and Meadows sat on a couch. Byrne wolfed down pigs in a blanket and little meatballs on toothpicks that staff had set on the coffee table.

Herschmann was primed to brawl and ready to dump on Powell. It had been a long day.

"Rudy," he said, turning to Giuliani, "Sidney was just in the Oval telling the president you don't know what the fuck you're doing. Right, Sidney?" He turned to Powell: "Why don't you tell Rudy to his face?"

"Eric, really it's not appropriate," Trump replied curtly.

"What's not appropriate?" Herschmann shot back. Turning to Powell, he said, "Why don't you repeat to Rudy what you just told the president in the Oval Office — that he has no idea about the case and that he only just began to understand it a few hours ago."

Three days later, Giuliani would publicly distance himself from Powell, telling Newsmax that Powell did not represent the president, and that "whatever she's talking about, it's her own opinions."

It didn't take long for the yelling to start up again. They were now in hour four of a meeting unprecedented even by the deranged standards of the final days of the Trump presidency.

Now it was Meadows' turn, blasting Flynn for trashing him and accusing him of being a quitter. "Don't you dare challenge me about whether I'm being supportive of the president and working hard," Meadows shouted, reminding Flynn that he'd defended him during his legal troubles.

Trump and Cipollone, who frequently butted heads, went at it too, over whether the administration had the authority to do what Powell was proposing.

Powell kept asserting throughout the night that she had — or would soon produce — the evidence needed to prove foreign interference. She kept insisting that Trump had the legal authority he needed to seize voting machines. But she did not have the goods.

Powell at one point turned to Lyons and demanded, "Why are you speaking? Are you still employed here?" The staff secretary, who had already resigned, laughed and joked, "Well I guess I'm here until midnight."

It was after midnight by the time the White House officials had finally said their piece. They left that night fully prepared for the mad possibility Trump might still name Sidney Powell special counsel. You have our advice, they told the president before walking out. You decide who to listen to.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Lol!

[TopHatter]

[Note: In response to a request for comment, Powell said in an emailed statement to Axios: “I will not publicly discuss my private meetings with the President of the United States. I believe those meetings are privileged and confidential under executive privilege and under rules of the legal profession. I would caution the readers to view mainstream media reports of any such conversations with a high degree of discernment and a healthy dose of skepticism.”]

Translation: It's true. Every last word of this is true: The President of the United States, amazingly successful businessman and Fighter for the Common Man, surrounds himself with batshit crazy bottom feeders, churning up an endless sea of garbage.

The article is dead wrong about one thing though:

It was remarkable that the presidency had deteriorated to such an extent that this fight in the Oval Office between senior White House officials and radical conspiracists was even taking place.

A. There's utterly nothing remarkable about this occurring amongst Donald Trump's circle of advisors.
B. His presidency never deteriorated, it was already at this point on Day One.

Trump expressed skepticism at various points about Powell's theories, but he said, "At least she’s out there fighting."

And that's all that matters to Trump or his die hard base of followers: "Fighting". It doesn't matter if the fight is worth fighting for, if the fight makes a goddamn bit of sense, if fighting is so utterly counter-productive that cutting off your nose to spite your face would be an improvement....all that matters is that He FIGHTS. jfc....